#dragon age joplin save me :(

[lizzybeeee]

DATV is overly reliant on Supplemental Media - especially if you are a returning player

TL;DR: Supplemental material should not be required reading in order to understand what's going on in the main game -> it's additional material that enhances what we were given. If what we were given is lacking and unable to coherently tell us a story, then the writers and those in charge did not prioritize what was important.

Not a take that's unique to Dragon Age, but one that is very relevant when talking about DATV. I've made a few posts about plot/story points that either make no sense or have been dropped entirely in the lead up from DAI to DATV. Every now and then I get a few comments or messages about how certain points I made were addressed in supplemental material released in the lead up to this games release.

This isn't a call out post, by the way! But it's frustrating, to me, that this games writing is so lacking that my understanding is being inhibited because I can't remember details from a book I read two years ago - not to mention various podcasts, comics, and short stories. My understanding of a video game in a video game series should not be reliant on additional/optional content.

DATV is a weird game in that it is absolutely a 'soft/scorched earth' reboot while also marketing itself as a continuation to what was set up in Inquisition and Trespasser. Personally, I think that if you are up to number 4 in a game series, one with a continuous story-line, it should be expected that new players won't be able to catch up to everything -> it's the game developers job to make the world and story intriguing enough that the new players will go back to previous games in the series and fill in the blanks themselves.

Veilguard, as a sequel, is overly reliant on content that comes from outside the games themselves (including DLC's) if you want to make sense of the world and story. Trespasser left us with an epilogue that set up some plot points for the next game: Solas & the Veil, the Elven Rebellion, and War with the Qun - plot points that have been built up since the time of Origins. But when we get into DATV two of these points have been dropped and resolved, off-screen.

There are more questions, but these are the ones that bothered me the most while playing the game:

What happened to the Agents of Fen'harel/ Elven Rebellion? -> answered in a cursed reddit AMA.

What happened to the Qunari following Trespasser -> addressed in Tevinter Nights, and a codex entry you can pick up (optional).

Why is Skyhold infested with demons? -> mentioned in Tevinter Nights.

How did the Dalish go from worshiping their own pantheon to knowing they are false gods? (specifically those we meet in the Veil Jumpers) -> mentioned in the Missing comic series.

What's up with Nevarra's Royals? -> Tevinter Nights addresses that there is a power struggle in the Pentaghast family and the role of the Mortalitasi in making it worse - though it does not address the whole 'mage puppeting a corpse' issue and all the implications it has.

This is a video game series -> the bulk of the information required for me to understand the story and its relation to previous entries needs to be included in the final game version. I am playing a video game and not attending a uni class - I should not need to have a required reading list in order to understand what the fuck is going on. I should definitely not need to go onto a reddit AMA to understand what happened in-game, either.

What makes this stand out the most is that DAI was very successful in tying in previous games, DLC's, movies, and books! Inquisition did a great job in getting you up to speed on the events of the previous games early on, providing personalization if you played those games, and giving the player the opportunity to inquire into these events.

Hiding away the answers in additional material or a codex entry that may be missed is not good game design or good writing. DAI didn't assume that you had bought and played the Legacy DLC -> it made certain you experienced the conversation with Varric and Hawke if you wanted to proceed in the game. It didn't hide away imperative information in codex entries - it had characters talk about it in scripted scenes and encourage the player to ask more. You would actively need to avoid interacting with characters for you to not experience this information in DAI.

Leliana talks about her role during the Blight, her calling by the Maker, and her relationship with Dorothea/Justinia -> DAO and Leliana's Song DLC.

Cullen talks about his time as a templar at Kinloch & Kirkwall -> DAO and DA2.

Cassandra speaks about her history, investigation into Hawke, and the Seekers -> Dawn of the Seeker movie, DA2, & Asunder novel.

Varric talks about Hawke, Kirkwall, and Corypheous -> DA2 and Legacy DLC.

Cole talks about how he discovered he was a 'demon' - it leads to further conversations about Rhys, Evangeline, and Lord-Seeker Lambert -> Asunder novel.

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts -> the game literally continues what the Masked Empire novel sets up, the Orlesian Civil War. The game does a decent job of telling us about the players (Celene, Gaspard, Briala etc...) and the reasoning behind the conflict through dialogue, the ability to explore the battlefields, quests, ambient dialogue, etc... The book is not required reading - though it greatly adds to the complexity of the characters, motivations, and political intrigue!

I never once, playing DA2 or DAI, felt penalized or like my experience was lacking because I had not engaged with supplemental material or DLC's. I got into Dragon Age when I was in high school, it wasn't until I graduated and began working after that I had the disposable income available for experiencing the extra material. I cannot say that for DATV - If you have played Inquisition and go into DATV straight from that you will, absolutely, be confused about how we got from A to B.

Which is especially strange to me!? Why is it that new players will be less confused than those that are returning players? It's like the game is actively punishing you for playing and caring about previous games in the series.

Supplemental media is bought because the main product has earned your investment, love, or interest. Not everyone has the income available to buy it with their own money - especially if you live outside the US and have to pay additional shipping costs. Not everyone has the ability to buy or 'obtain' the digital versions either. My understanding of the main story of a video game in a video game series should not require additional monetary investment into other mediums.

The game itself should be enough and DATV is not enough.

[bodysnatch3r]

putting this under a read more because i have nowhere else to put it. this ended up being long! mostly i am Processing.

i think what's fucking me up about veilguard being so polarising is that i have no way to make my own value judgement. i can't play it, at all, full stop. consoles are expensive, i live paycheck-to-paycheck and realistically speaking cannot even begin to think about buying a current gen console until well into 2025. i was saving up and then in june shit happened and those savings had to be used for something else and my stipend got reduced by a couple dozen pounds and the bills went up. so it goes.

i do not want to watch someone play it because it is just antithetical to how i relate to dragon age as media, and besides anyone posting playthroughs is inundated with critical comments. and the result is that the usual mechanisms i have against brainworms concerning certain types of critical statements—knowing i can fall back on my own experiences with the games and my own judgements of where the writing succeeded or didn't, what story am i trying to tell through these interactive games, how do i reconcile it with the story the devs were trying to tell, where does it diverge, etc.—are totally inaccessible to me.

this would have been fine, i think, if the fandom consensus i've been seeing hadn't been mostly "either you hate it or love it with no in between. and if you think the opposite of me you are Stupid". which. well i guess ten years in the fandom have taught me Nothing. but i digress.

i would have been fine, because i know from experience that i am often satisfied with scraps that others may find lacking—for example, i think dai quickly dropping and flattening the mage/templar conflict into a couple of missions in the hinterlands was fine, because we have several books that hint at and deal with the larger-branching consequences of da2. much of my fan experience is, generally, concerned with where i can "fill in the blanks" because that is what interests me the most. i thrive in the corners and margins. the less i know, the more i can take what canon gives us and run.

plus, over the years i have developed a tendency to meet bioware where they are at. past experience in creative industries has really shown to me how stifling any form of artmaking can be in a corporate environment, and i know that right now the blame as to why we got veilguard and not joplin is being passed around like a hot potato, but the truth of the matter is, we will never know beyond the fact that bioware management is beholden, like all companies, to the "number go up" capitalist doctrine, no doubt reinforced by their parent company ea. and that, at least following the failure of anthem and andromeda (but i suspect from even earlier, as david gaider has said), bioware has been the ugly duckling of ea's roster. (as an aside, i would love to know who in ea has such a soft spot for bioware, that they allowed them to continue on following those massive failures.)

what i am trying to say is, i have been struggling so much with something i had managed to heal myself from, precisely because the one coping mechanism that does work for me (stewing in the source material) is totally inaccessible to me. so i have all of this antsy, nervous, conflicted energy, exacerbated by my own obsessive tendencies and the fact that sometimes having a childhood hyperfixation return full force as an adult just really fucking sucks when my personality is prone to regressing into harmful thought patterns and behaviours—is it as bad as people are saying? will it be a massive disappointment when i finally do play it? should i even like it when apparently it is such a slap in the face to the fans?—and nowhere to put it.

i kind of preferred it when we all thought this game was just never going to come out and i had made peace with it.

[felassan]

Some more snippets of insight on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, and some thoughts on future BioWare games in general from Mark Darrah, from his recent Dragon Age: Inquisition - Memories and Lessons video:

"[...] presenting vision and 'X' statements, all of the things you do to start to align a team around a direction. This was pretty rocky on Dragon Age: Inquisition for basically three reasons I would say. First of all, we were presenting a top-level vision, things like 'Dragon Age with a Skyrim vibe' or 'the exploration of Dragon Age: Origins in Frostbite' or things like that, things that sort've were very surface level. And those kind of statements can be incredibly useful, it is incredibly valuable to be willing to have vision statements or or 'X' statements that are somewhat derivative, where you say, 'it's like X with Y, because people can grab onto those things really effectively. But when you're presenting a surface-level vision, ideally what you would want to then do is have your sub-disciplines and sub-teams present more detailed visions within their own respective areas, that feed back and build upon that over-arching vision statement. This is what we were doing on Joplin, this is what we were doing on Morrison as well, because by doing that, people are able to find something that they understand a little bit better, grab onto that and then build up towards the over-arching vision."

"So one last thing on vision. I actually don't remember the specific language we were using in the early days of Dragon Age: Inquisition for its vision, which isn't a great sign. I can remember the vision statement for Mass Effect 2, which was 'the Dirty Dozen in space'. I can remember the vision statement for Joplin, which it was 'we would be heroes but the records are sealed'."

"The telemetry on the tactical camera for Dragon Age: Inquisition basically shows that very few people used it and those people who did use it used it largely to pause, look around at the battlefield, decide what they're going to do and then return to the over the shoulder camera and play the game in real-time for the most part. [...] The fact that it's very expensive plus the fact that it wasn't wildly used, though you could argue that part of the reason why it's not wildly used is because it's not the best possible implementation of it, those two things together to my mind mean probably we aren't going to see tac cam going forward from the Dragon Age franchise. I mean, they could surprise me. My bet is that Dragon Age will continue cementing itself as an action RPG franchise and continue to move away from the old-school cRPG things that mark its origin, so to speak, haha, and that we probably won't see tac cam in Dragon Age 4. But, I guess we'll see."

"You defeat Corypheus, you save the world, the credits roll and then there's a post-credits sequence where something is revealed about Solas. And for some people this undermines the entire game. They feel like the game as a result of the post-credit sequence is incomplete and that we then tricked you into buying Trespasser in order to get the ending of the game. [...] There was a negative enough reaction from enough people within the community for Dragon Age to the post-credits sequence that my guess is that BioWare will never do a post-credits sequence ever again because they are going to be very gun-shy based upon that reaction. And that's kinda too bad from my perspective."

"For Dragon Age: Inquisition, Early Access did not help, it hurts, because what it essentially means is that your launch day is seven days early but for a much smaller group of people, and you are having to deal with a launch and then deal with another launch seven days later. It allows the sentiment on your title to begin to solidify while you're not even really selling that many copies of the game. You saw this dramatically with Mass Effect: Andromeda, where a version of the game came out with some fidelity bugs and it was out in the world for a week without a lot of control over the narrative. Sentiment on the game solidified very quickly and very negatively. I believe that EA is backing away from this for story-driven titles. I do not like Early Access in general, and certainly, Inquisition solidified my opinion on that topic."

"In some ways the box for Dragon Age: Inquisition is very like the box for Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. It has strong use of negative space, it has a fairly strong graphical look, but in some other more obvious ways it is a big departure. It moves from the red and white aesthetic of the first two games and goes to green and darker blacks and grays. And there's some good reasons and some bad reasons for this. The good reason is to make the box look more like the game. And I think there's something to be said for that. I think there's something to be said for having your color palette of your marketing campaign be consistent with the game itself. You can see this with Dreadwolf. They are trying to do the same thing again, is bring some consistency to the game and the UI and the marketing assets. I think there's something to be said for that, a consistency of look."

"Dragon Age: Inquisition is probably one of the last Collector's Editions that BioWare's ever going to do"

He also mentions the project codenamed Hendrix:

"We decided that we were going to try to make a standalone free-to-play version of Dragon Age multiplayer. This had the codename of Hendrix, following the naming convention that we were using for codenames at the time, and it was basically trying to be something that would introduce you to Dragon Age as a property and be an on-ramp for the game. EA wasn't very supportive of this product at all, because they just saw it as a potential cost center, and so it was only available for download for a very short period of time, it got no marketing and it essentially kind've faded into the ether. But briefly, in 2015 there was a free-to-play version of Dragon Age: Inquisition available for download."

and his plans for [a] future video[s] containing reflections on Joplin and Morrison:

"Okay, I did this for Dragon Age II and I will do it again for Anthem. [...] With that, we are done with Dragon Age: Inquisition. We probably have two more of these left. We will probably do Anthem, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Joplin together as a single video, and then we will finish this series up with a video about Morrison."

[source]

[adrienneec]

Christmas List from I don’t know When.

Adrienne’s Wish List

Priorities: AAmiles (I'm saving up to get to New Zealand, sooner rather than later, to visit Colin), Airfare and/or accomodations for Amnesty International's Annual General Meeting in March (registration for the conference a kind gift from Christina),1-yr gym membership, Rosetta Stone Language Learning Software for Spanish, Dance Shoes from Capezio, Ball Gown, Black Flats for Work, Clothes for Work, or Money/Gift Certificates to be used towards the purchase of any of the above.

CDs: 2Pac*, 311*, A Tribe Called Quest*, Aerosmith*, Alicia Keys*, All American Rejects, Ani DiFranco*, Arrested Development*, Avril Lavigne*, The Beach Boys*, Beastie Boys*, The Beatles*, Beatnuts, Big Pun, The Black Eyed Peas*, Black Star, Blondie*, Bob Marley, Common, Cruel Intentions Soundtrack, The Cure, Cypress Hill*, D12*, Dane Cook, The Darkness, De La Soul, Dead Prez, Dilated Peoples*, Dr. Dre, Eminem*, Erykah Badu*, Evanescence*, Fiona Apple*, Frank Sinatra*, The Fugees, Gail Ann Dorsey, Gipsy Kings, Gorillaz*, Green Day, Il Divo, India Arie*, Jason Mraz, John Mayer, Joss Stone*, Janis Joplin, Jewel*, Jimi Hendrix*, Kanye West, The Killers, KRS-One, Lauryn Hill, Los Lonely Boys, Love Actually Soundtrack, Madonna*, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5*, Method Man, Mos Def*, Nas, Natasha Bedingfield, Nelly Furtado, N.E.R.D.*, No Doubt, NOFX, Norah Jones*, The Notorious B.I.G., Operation Ivy, Outkast*, The Pharcyde, Pink, Pump up the Volume Soundtrack, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, The Red Hot Chili Peppers*, Redman*, The Roots, Santana, Sarah McLachlan*, Save the Last Dance Soundtracks, Sean Paul, Shakira, Simon & Garfunkel, Snoop Doggy Dogg*, Staind, Sublime, Sugar Ray, Talib Kweli, TLC*, Tracy Chapman*, The Truth About Charlie Soundtrack, UB40, Usher, Weezer*, Wyclef Jean*,

TV Shows (DVDs All Episodes): Absolutely Fabulous**, Aeon Flux, Alias, Angel, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chappelle’s Show, CSI (Original, Miami, and NY)**, Da Ali G Show, The Daily Show: Indecision 2004, Dawson’s Creek, Dead Like Me, Desperate Housewives, Family Guy, Friends, Futurama, Gilmore Girls, The L Word, Las Vegas, Law and Order (Original, SVU, and Criminal Intent), Lost**, Malcolm in the Middle, Monk**, My So-Called Life, Newsradio, Pen and Teller’s Bullshit, Reno 911, Scrubs, Seinfeld**, Sex and the City, The Simpsons**, Smallville, The Sopranos, South Park**, Will and Grace**,

Movies (DVD preferred, but VHS ok too): 28 Days, A League of Their Own, American Pie (Unrated), Big Daddy, Billy Madison, Birdcage, Black Sheep, Black Hawk Down, Bruce Almighty, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Can’t Buy Me Love, Clue, Dazed and Confused, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, Empire Records, Ever After-A Cinderella Story, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Girl Interrupted, Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, Half Baked, Happy Gilmore, Idle Hands, Iron Jawed Angels, Karate Kid, Kill Bill 1 & 2, Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2, Little Nicky, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Miss Congeniality, Monty Python (except the Holy Grail), My Fair Lady, Napoleon Dynomite Ocean’s Eleven, Office Space, Old School, Orgazmo(Unrated), Patch Adams, PCU, Pearl Harbor, Pretty Woman, Red Dragon, Roger & Me, Saving Silverman, Say Anything, Scary Movie, Seven, Singing in the Rain, Spaceballs, The Lord of the Rings 1 & 2(DVD), The Other Sister, The Princess Bride, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sound of Music, The Wedding Singer, The Wizard of Oz, The Wood, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar, There’s Something About Mary, Tommy Boy, Toys, Up in Smoke, Varsity Blues, Very Bad Things, Waiting, Waterboy, Wayne’s World, Wedding Crashers, West Side Story, What About Bob?, Zoolander,

Stand-up Comedy: Ellen DeGeneres**, Kathy Griffin, Martin Lawrence, Denis Leary, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock

SNL Videos or DVDs: Best of: Clinton Scandal, Cris Farley, Game Show Parodies, 96-97, Tim Meadows, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler 

Computer Games: American McGee’s Alice, Amerizone, CSI Games (Except Dark Motives), Grim Fandango, Law and Order Games, The Longest Journey, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Sanitarium, Seven Games of the Soul, Syberia, URU: Ages Beyond Myst, Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption,

Electronics: Shower radio

Books: By Bread Alone, Call Me Crazy, Carry a Nation: Retelling the Life, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Cry to Heaven, Dracula, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage, Feast of All Saints, Jon Stewart: Naked Pictures of Famous People,  Memoirs of a Geisha, Merrick, The Mummy; or Ramses the Damned, Nanny Diaries, Nice Big American Baby, Pandora, The Politics of Deceit, Sleeping Beauty Trilogy, The Stranger, Vittorio the Vampire, Waiting for Rain, Witches’ Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches,

Books by Michael Moore

Travel books

Other:  Contour-foam silver slippers from Sharper Image

 *Any CDs by these artists, except:

 2Pac: Greatest Hits

311: Greatest Hits ’93-‘03

A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauder, The Anthology

Aerosmith: Gold

Alicia Keys: Unplugged

Ani DiFranco: Living in Clip

Arrested Development: The Best of

Avril Lavigne: Let Go

The Beach Boys: Sounds of Summer

Beastie Boys: Licensed to Ill, Check Your Head, To The 5 Boroughs

The Beatles: Abbey Road

The Black Eyed Peas: Elephunk, Monkey Business

Blondie: The Best of,

Cypress Hill: Unreleased and Revamped, Black Sunday, Till Death Do Us Part, Cypress

Hill

D12: World, D12

Dilated Peoples: Neigborhood Watch

Eminem: The Eminem Show, Encore, Curtain Call

Erykah Badu: Baduizm

Evanescence: Fallen

Fiona Apple: Tidal

Frank Sinatra: The Very Best of

Gorillaz: Gorillaz, Demon Days

India Arie: Acoustic Soul

Jewel: Pieces of You, Spirit, This Way

Jimi Hendrix: Axis: Bold as Love

Joss Stone: Mind, Body & Soul

Madonna: The Immaculate Collection, Bedtime Stories

Maroon 5: Songs About Jane

Mos Def: The New Danger

N.E.R.D.: Fly or Die

Norah Jones: Come Away With Me

Outkast: Stankonia

Redman: Where is Reggie Noble?

The Red Hot Chili Peppers: One Hot Minute

Sarah McLachlan: Afterglow

Snoop Doggy Dogg: Rhythm & Blues

TLC: 3D

Tracy Chapman: New Beginnings

Weezer: Weezer

Wyclef Jean: The Preacher´s Son

 **Any DVDs of the series except:

Absolutely Fabulous: Season 5

CSI: Season 1

CSI Miami: Season 1

Ellen DeGeneres: Here and Now

Lost: Season 2

Monk: Season: 1

Seinfeld: Seasons 1 & 2

The Simpsons: Seasons 1 & 2

South Park: Volume 4

Will And Grace: Season 1

[lizzybeeee]

Solas addressing current day Thedas about his plans to bring down the Veil: